Presentation title: De-carbonizing the steel industry: India’s perspective

Mr Uttam Singh graduated in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT BHU in 1992 and subsequently joined as a Graduate Trainee in Tata Steel Ltd, Jamshedpur. After a stint of 4 years as Trainee and Manager of Blast Furnace Operation, he left on a sabbatical to earn ‘Executive MBA’ from XLRI, Jamshedpur. Since then, he has been serving in various capacities at Tata Steel for the last 25 years.  At present he is the Vice-President (Iron Making).

Mr Singh has made significant contributions in the blast furnace understanding, design and process improvements like estimation of floating state of the dead-man and its relation to the stability of the blast furnace operation, mass distribution in the falling stream of burden materials, development of coke rate prediction model for blast furnaces, evolution of refractory design in ‘I’ blast furnace of Tata Steel and improvement in slag granulation system design at ‘I’ blast furnace of Tata Steel, in total accounting to 30 international/national journals and more than 10 patents.

Mr Singh also led the successful team for the fastest ramp-up of ‘I’ Blast Furnace, achieving a record productivity of 2.8 Tons/day/m³ in the second year of production and achieving highest man power productivity of 25 KT/man/year which is better than European counter parts.  During his stint as the Chief of ‘I’ blast furnace he has also recorded just ‘One Lost Time Injury’, ‘Zero Effluent discharge’ and ‘Reduction of Water Consumption to 0.5m³/ton of hot metal’. He is also the recipient of ‘Best Departmental Head of the Year’, Tata Steel Ltd in 2005.

In recognition of his phenomenal contribution to the understanding, design and process optimization of blast furnaces keeping in mind the environment and safety concerns, Mr Uttam Singh is awarded the “2014 TSL New Millennium Award” by Indian Institute of Metal.